Thought for Food
By Jeff Dupuis and A.G. Pasquella
In our age of plenty, where no fruit or vegetable is out of season and unavailable at the local, chain grocery store, it’s difficult to conceive of widespread shortages that might cause a paradigm shift in our eating habits, and, in turn, our culture. But remember, the US election was just decided, in part, by the price of eggs. Nothing is more of a “kitchen table issue” than what goes on the kitchen table.
Climate change has brought record droughts across the globe. Pollinator decline has already had costly impacts on our agriculture. Viruses too shape our dietary habits, from avian flu affecting the price of eggs to COVID-19 leading to more of us dining in, baking our own bread, finding solace in our kitchens. Our planet is shrinking, but the supply chain that brings our food is ever-expanding. Climate catastrophes, wars of both the armed and trade variety and so many other factors can topple the house of cards that brings us our food.
On the climate front, Canada is especially vulnerable. The arctic, along with other northern areas and the continental interior are warming at a rate faster than the rest of the globe. What does that mean for our fisheries? What does that mean for the Prairies, the breadbasket of this and other countries?
Perhaps, the answer lies in culture changing food, rather than food changing culture. Canada’s corporatized food system puts a lot of power in too few hands. One of the end results we have seen in the headlines recently is price-fixing and price-gouging from the nation’s most powerful grocery chains. When only four companies handle close to seventy percent of all grocery sales, how can we expect them to be held accountable?
Let’s harness the “Buy Canadian” energy brought on by Donald Trump’s trade war and threats of annexation and take it one step further. Slogans like “Buy Canadian,” “shop local” and “farm-to-table” need to be more than buzzwords, but integrated into a lifestyle, and from there, become our culture. Let’s revive the local shops constantly under threat from large chains, let’s support smaller farms, rather than multinational conglomerates and let’s look to tradition for inspiration and the answers to a more prosperous future.
Further to just supporting local business and family farms, urban farming and land trusts could also transform our food supply, injecting a new agrarianism into our culture. Taxing the profits of larger “agribusinesses” and investing in trusts, Indigenous foodways and urban farming could serve to connect us more with where our food comes from and make Canada’s food production system more resilient to the changing climate and a less stable global supply chain.
The future of food, like everything else, is grim, unless we wrestle the power back from multinational conglomerates and take our food sovereignty seriously. That requires not only a change in how we relate to food, but to the land, farmers and the Indigenous knowledge keepers who understand it. When people, not markets, control food and the land on which it’s grown, we can all eat well.